Why Now?

• In June, we graduated a terrific senior class that matriculated at an impressive array of colleges

• Over the past year we enjoyed record attendance at several admissions events and recently opened with 215+ students

• The 2018-2019 Fund for Falmouth Academy exceeded its goal by over 15% 

• In the fall of 2018 we closed the largest campaign in the school’s history, which yielded us two beautiful and very well-used new facilities and boosted our endowment which is at an all-time high

• Our budget is balanced

• We are debt free.  

 

Given these positive vital signs, when it comes to launching a strategic planning process, one would be justified in wondering why, or at least why now?

 

Quite simply, Falmouth Academy is not immune from the headwinds into which all independent schools are sailing.  The challenges of shifting demographics, economic uncertainties, escalating tuitions, increased and varied competition, and an aging physical plant call to mind both Richard Cushing’s observation that, “It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark,” and John F. Kennedy’s advice, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”  

 

It is always better to plan from a position of relative strength.  In doing so, our decision-making is made not out of necessity, but in the context of a confident assessment of our many strengths and a thoughtful consideration of how we can build on those strengths so that the world enjoys the contributions of our talented graduates for generations to come. 

 

Exponential developments in technology have yielded fields—artificial intelligence, data analytics, bioengineering, robotics, to name but a few—that barely existed ten years ago, fields that demand deep and broad curricular expertise from agile adaptive thinkers. And, tomorrow’s graduates will also be expected to rise to the challenges of the political, social, and particularly environmental crises that they stand to inherit.  Increasingly, it seems, change is not some external temporary inconvenience; it is the very water we swim in. Or, to borrow the words of Darwin, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”